Thank you to my new Patrons, who light my path in the darkness (flu) that is my life (5th one this winter): Alita, Roaring Waters, oregano, Hi, Sattish, sandwichmoth, Snakee, Andres919, jgray, Sophie Kiser
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Harry stared at the marauder's map being shoved in his face like a hooker who'd just been asked to play minecraft. Dazed, confused, affronted.
"Hermione and Harley are waiting there for you, so we can go confront him together?" Harry asked the boy who lived to wake him up at ungodly hours at night.
"Yes," Neville whispered harshly. "But we need your help!"
"I'm sorry," Harry said with a sigh as he pulled out his wand, which he slept with, "but we won't be confronting anyone."
A bright red light flashed through the third-year dorm room, illuminating Neville's shocked face.
The stupefaction jinx splashed harmlessly against the invisibility cloak.
"Well, this is awkward," Harry said with furrowed brows and clenched his free hand, trying to compress the air around Neville to prevent the boy from escaping his bedroom.
Wait… that came out wrong.
Harry's attempts were of no use however, his magic refused to touch the boy covered in the cloak, sliding off. It was like trying to pick up a marble with two oily chopsticks.
"You're with him!" Neville suddenly exclaimed in a panicked voice as he shakily backed off towards the door.
Harry raised a hand and the door slammed shut behind the boy and locked itself with an audible click as the other Hufflepuffs started awakening.
"Get off your high horse!" Harry shouted as he jumped out of bed, clad only in his boxers and socks. Both pieces of clothing were white and covered with little red hearts. "You don't have the ability to stop Quirrell, and neither do I! We'd just die in the attempt!"
"We have to try!" Neville shouted back, turned around and held up his wand against the door. "Bombarda!"
Harry felt it coming, the explosion curse. He tried to summon a shield to protect the door but he'd never practiced shielding something so far removed from his body.
The door violently exploded outwards, planks of wood and splinters flying through the air. The boy who lived escaped through the door, covering himself in the invisibility cloak and thus dodging the conjured ropes Harry had sent his way.
Not having any other choice at this point, he ran after the boy, whose footsteps through the common room with his unfair advantage of actually having shoes on and exited through the barrel entrance.
Harry followed outside, just in time to see… absolutely nothing.
No sound, no sight. Just nothing.
"Fucking great," he muttered as his thoughts raced. Neville likely knew more hidden passages than Harry due to having access to the map, which meant that not only was his path towards the third floor unclear, but it was also impossible to intercept someone on a road that one didn't know existed.
The only thing Harry had was the end destination.
The third-floor corridor.
"I could just let it play out," he muttered as he stood in front of the entrance to the Hufflepuff common room in his boxers and socks. "Fate and all that."
He sighed after a few more seconds of contemplation. "I'm such a fucking Gryffindor, aren't I?" he complained and started running.
-/-
A glowing silver raccoon escaped the wand of a red-haired boy dressed in… not very much… as he ran up the revolving stairs of Hogwarts to reach the third floor.
"Expecto Patronum," Harry incanted again, sending another messenger to another teacher.
He'd first contacted Flitwick, whose living quarters were the closest to the third floor, before sending a patronus to McGonagall. The most recent one had been intended for Slughorn.
He hoped that the professors would hear the urgency in his voice. Harry doubted that even Voldemort, possessing a corpse as he was, would be able to stand against the might of the entire Hogwarts faculty.
Just to be sure, he also sent a patronus to Dumbledore, although with the man being at the ICW headquarters, it would probably arrive much too late.
Harry ducked into an abandoned classroom on the second floor and muttered a password into one of the corners. "Absendere, bitch," he muttered, the second part being aimed more at Neville than the secret passage that opened up, a spiral staircase leading upwards.
He might not know as many hidden passages as the boy, but he still knew several.
His feet smacked against the cold stone as he ran upwards, emerging on the third floor and quickly dipping into the corridor at the centre of all his woes. Unfortunately, but not contrary to his expectations, the door was closed.
Hermione and Harley weren't here anymore, which, considering that they wouldn't have gone in without Neville, likely meant that the boy had beaten him here.
No other choice to be had Harry threw himself to the floor on his knees and slid towards the door blocking him from what was likely going to be cerberus. On his way there his left hand picked up a dust bunny from the floor while his right waved his wand to transfigure it into a very basic flute with only three holes.
Another wave of his wand caused the door in front of him to open so he could slide right through just as he brought the flute to his lips.
The dulcet sounds of darude sandstorm, the only song Harry knew how to play on a flute, rang out through the halls of Hogwarts and the truck sized three-headed beast of a dog promptly fell to the ground and started napping just as Harry slid to a stop in front it.
Throwing the flute behind him, the boy jumped up and opened the trapdoor next to the dog, throwing himself inside just as the cerberus began awakening, one head after another.
Already falling through the air as the cerberus idly snapped on one of its gigantic heads after his disappearing form, Harry spun in the air as he waved his wand, enveloping himself in a cloak of fire which illuminated the room and the pool-sized mass of wriggling anaconda sized vines on the floor. The vines hissed, for all that vines could hiss and tried wriggling away from the light.
Unfortunately, this meant that Harry landed spread-eagled on the stone floor. His bones jumped up and down in his body, and his muscles bruised.
Not having any time for the nonsense, Harry cast another ball of fire towards the door to the next room and quickly ran over, hopping over any remaining vines that couldn't escape from his wrath fast enough.
Hand on the knob he quickly found himself in the room with the keys and suddenly had to pause to consider the challenge in front of him.
Like everyone who'd read Harry Potter, and everyone who'd been reincarnated into its world, he had, of course, at some times considered how he might fare against the challenges of the third-floor corridor.
The first two had been simple enough, but for the key room, the information provided hadn't been sufficient to strategise.
A flick of his wand informed Harry that the flying keys were enchanted against interference and summoning. This meant that he'd have to catch the correct one through material means. He quickly identified the key he needed, it being the one that was flying the slowest, with its wings bent and battered.
He looked towards the broom laying by the door. Harry wasn't an amazing flyer by anyone's metric, even if he would probably at some point be able to catch the darned key.
Thankfully, he had a different solution. He went over to the broom and forcefully removed a few of its bristles. Holding these in his hands, he waved his wand over them and formed a small woven basket with a very small opening.
A flex of his free hand caused the basket to shoot up and unceremoniously scoop up the key, at which point the other keys turned aggressive and started buzzing towards him aggressively. But not before he'd already caught the basket, dispelled the transfiguration, caught the key, unlocked the door and slipped through.
Before he closed it he tore off the key's wings and left the key in the lock so whomever came after could open the door without bothering with the disenchantment, or the chase.
It was here in the chess room, the pieces looming large overhead, that he encountered his first signs of life. Hermione, and Harley for that matter, were sprawled out against the entrance to the next room, looking at him with large eyes. Going by the growing pool of blood underneath Harley and the ragged breathing of Hermione, they hadn't had the chess skills necessary to sacrifice only one piece.
"Harry," Hermione shouted at him with tears in her eyes. "Please help Harley, she's not responding!"
Harry walked over by the side of the board and frowned when the chess pieces turned towards him and drew their weapons. A set of 32 enchanted golems… He couldn't fight them…
"You have to defeat them in chess, take one of the pieces, Neivlle slipped through with his cloak," Hermione said with a tired voice, hiccuping through the tears.
Harry sighed and stepped onto the chessboard, shushing away the king and taking his place.
Had Hermione and Harley not been present, he could have perhaps tried clearing this room through Fiendfyre, as it would destroy the golems, enchantment or no enchantment. But if he did so with his non-existent control over the cursed flames, since he'd never practised, they would just become casualties.
"Pawn to E4," he said in a commanding voice, causing the white pawn in the form of an infantry soldier to step forward. The opponent mirrored the move.
"Pawn to D4. Episkey is a healing spell which can heal only minor injuries, but it can also be used to alleviate the worst symptoms of major injuries, such as blood loss. Queen to D4. The wand movement is a circle, and the user should imagine the flesh knitting together under their wand. Rook to B5." Over the course of the next minute, Harry explained the intricacies of the healing spell while playing against the chessboard.
From what he was able to gather Hermione was able to halt the bleeding somewhat, which allowed him to put his entire focus on defeating the opponent, which he succeeded in doing ten minutes later.
Ten minutes that he sincerely hoped didn't cost anyone their life.
Before going to the next room, he crouched down next to the unconscious Harley and the barely coherent Hermione to apply his own minor healing spell, taking note to practice healing more seriously in the future.
"The professors should be arriving soon," he reassured the girls, before heading through the door.
Hermione said something in protest, but he couldn't hear her anymore.
The next room smelled badly. Thankfully, the giant troll inhabiting it was still knocked out, lying on the ground and snoring with a bruise the size of a handball on its head.
Under the muffling charm, Harry charged through the room and entered the next one.
Here, he stopped to consider his surroundings.
In the books the last chamber had been Snape's logic puzzle which one needed to solve to get at the correct potion with which one could pass through the flames leading to the last chamber.
Fortunately, or unfortunately, depending on your sexual orientation and mental state, Snape was not a teacher at Hogwarts, making this chamber the one chamber Harry had not read or heard about in his last life.
The fact that there was a potions desk in the middle, with a bubbling cauldron and a bunch of ingredients however, indicated that Slughorn had taken over the job of his predecessor and successor.
"Well, Fuck."
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AN: I am so tempted to just have Harry get stuck in this room until the teachers come lmao. Anyway, check out more chapters on Patreon, if it interests you, one of my recent updates to this story was very controversial so that means you'll probably feel something when you read it?